Tag Archives: moving

Roadtrippin’

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As you may or may not have guessed after reading this post, we’ve moved! In fact, we moved quite a bit. Last Friday I drove the car packed full of all of our schmoo and Linus to pick himself up at Yestermorrow in Warren, VT. From there we journeyed over to the Lake George, NY area and spent a delightful night with friends. We had a nice, leisurely breakfast and popped back on the road and spent the night at Allegany State Park in New York. From there we spent the next night at Johnson Sauk Trail State Park in Illinois at a very empty campground… then on to the Badlands that next night. The next morning we camped at the Wapiti campground outside of Yellowstone, went through the park the next morning before camping at  Three Islands State Park in Glenns Ferry, ID and finally home! Phew!

We camped the whole way (well… besides that first night) and loved avoiding stuffy hotel rooms. We used the uscampgrounds.info website to find camping sites along the way. It was so helpful and easy to use! Plus they have a companion swimming holes site (if you’re of a mind to go a-swimmin’).

The very first stop at Yestermorrow to pick up the final travel companion. Everything is all packed and ready to go, including Linus!

We had a really late night getting into Lake George, so no photos. But that’s ok! I took some the next day…

Linus, stretching his buns at a rest stop along the way. He made many new friends, mostly women over 50 who were intrigued that a.) he was not, in fact, a dog and b.) that he had a lovely pink harness on.

We set up camp in Allegany, NY the second night and cooked some Annie’s macaroni and cheese with some tomatoes for dinner.

We worked it out so that Linus camped inside his cage in one of the tent’s vestibules over night with a tarp wrapped around the sides of his cage to keep the extra wind and any driving rain out. He seemed pretty content and happy to be out of the car.

We went for a little stroll together while we waited for the noodles to cook. Muddy paws are a sure sign that everything is right in the world with Linus. We had an uneventful night and left the park at 6 the next morning. We drove across Ohio, Indiana and most of Illinois and camped at Johnson Sauk Trail State Park.

We drove in as the sun was setting and camped in the middle of a rather large, human planted forest with very straight rows of trees. It was so muggy that we didn’t use our sleeping bags at all. There were three only three other groups camping in the park that night so Linus was able to roam around sans leash! Oh how risque!

We broke camp at 5:30 the next morning and made our way across the rest of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and most of South Dakota and camped in the Badlands! We were caught in a crazy storm complete with driving rain, wind and lightening in South Dakota so it was dark by the time we made it into the Badlands park that night. The lightening lit up the rocks and made everything feel very eerie as we rolled down the deserty roads. We woke up at 5 am the next morning and finished packing the car as the sun came up over the hills…

We rolled through the park as the sun came up and Joe took a little walk out over one of the ridges…

We found an enormous colony of prairie dogs along the road and got out of the car to watch them dance and squeak at each other from their burrows. But then we noticed this sign and decided to keep on moving before plaguey things started happening.

We went to the infamous (or at least incredibly well advertised) Wall Drug which was fun in an embarrassing touristy sort of way. Then we puttered up to Mt. Rushmore… I don’t know that I’d make that stop again. But it was a nice, scenic-ish drive. We made it across the rest of South Dakota and most of the way across Wyoming before camping at the Wapiti Campgrounds outside of Yellowstone. That was by far my favorite place to camp over the entire trip.   

We rigged up a nice little kitchen roof to cook under because it threatened to rain all over everything.

I had a genius idea: let’s make pizza bread! A whole minute later, I realized that there’s no way to turn the stove down AND we didn’t have a lid for the pan. That most certainly equals burned bottoms. I gave up pretty quickly and made a squishy bready soupy thing instead! Nice. It was a bit chilly so a warm dinner was most appreciated.

I curled up in my sleeping bag pretty early that night but in the morning….

I spent some time cuddling with Linus! It’s so nice to be able to zip open the flap and have a whole ‘nother bunny room right there! A very large fox cruised right through our camp that morning (about 16 inches tall) and would have come right into the tent if I hadn’t shushed it away!

We motored right into Yellowstone from there.

Before Old Faithful did it’s thing…

And after. There was another fellow standing next to us who kept complaining that it was only a “wussy squirt”. The sentence still makes my mouth feel yucky. I was duly impressed.

As I’m uploading these photos I’m noticing how epically clouded that day was! So pretty…

We spent the next night in Idaho at the most pristine, park-like camp site I have ever seen. They had some beautiful bathrooms. It was also the most expensive.

Draining some more Annie’s for dinner!   

This tree has eyes! It sees all…

The next morning we drove through Boise (a very neat city!), on through Oregon and ended up in Sandy at 4 pm! Not too shabby!

Moving to Music

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What have I been up to in the short short days since camp ended and I re-entered good old shiny civilization? I’ve taken a few showers, unpacked, eaten real people food and then started to contemplate repacking. Why am I repacking, you may ask yourself? Well… before I tell you I want you to sit down, put your head between your knees and take some good, deep breaths. Hah, I just wanted to imagine a small group of people doing that in awkward places like coffee shops or on their couches. Anywho I’m moving to Vermitt (that’s how I’ve been pronouncing Vermont lately) in about a week and a day (oh deary that sounds so soon!).

WHAT?! I know. I’ll be working at a place called Bonnieview Sheep Dairy in Craftsbury Common, VT. I spotted this farm in the WWOOFing book I ordered a few weeks ago and I immediately started to do my happy dance (you’ve probably seen this dance… it breaks itself out fairly often). I e-mailed them and it turns out they have an opening through the month of October. I’ll be living in a yurt, working with sheep and doing other farm-like things. Want to read a description? Yeah you do…

“470 acres of rolling pastures and fields surrounded by woods. Fresh water pond on the farm for fishing and swimming. description of organic activities: organic pastures, cropland, garden, 2 cows and 50 laying hens; 300 sheep and 7 pigs fed small amount of commercial grain. April- Oct we milk the sheep and make cheese on the farm. We feed the whey from the cheese plant to the pigs. Large farm garden feeds us and supplies vegetables to on farm dinners. Out door clay bread oven for pizzas and bread for farmers markets. Sheep are all rotationally grazed on our 100 acres of pastures. We heat only with firewood gathered from our land. All of the hay we used is harvested from our fields. Suggested length of stay is 2 week, months of year April-Nov. Two farm stay rooms when available, coming in June 09 24? Yurt or accommodations in hay loft expectations 5-8 hrs/day 6 days/wk Transportation available: on a limited basis. languages spoken are English and a little French, can host children no pets, special diets on a limited basis, we grow a majority of our food.”

Oh I’m so excited! Yes, I know it’s going to be cold and no, I think I probably won’t die from being to cold. I’ll just stop those comments right there. If you want to chat about how cold it’s going to be you can talk to my mummy and have a long, fascinating discussion about it. Boooorrrriiinnnggg… where’s your sense of adventure!? Anywho, I have some other motivations but I think that working on this farm is a pretty good one. Plus I’ve never lived outside of the Pacific Northwest (and really never been in a real winter) so this should be a pretty neat little adventure, no? I’ve wanted to live in a yurt and work with sheeps for a while and this kills both wants with one stone. I’ve been following a few blogs about suburban farming, living in yurts, gardening etc. that have made the whole idea sound glorious… curious about which ones I’m talking about? Well here’s a very short list then:

Mayaland – I love how this lady writes. She lives in a yurt with her family, they have goats and they have been adding a series of recycled buildings to their little compound. If I could fastforward ten years this is where I want to be and what I want life to look like.

Little House in the Suburbs – WHOA! She lives in Portland, has two goats, some chickens and a garden in her backyard AND she made her own bee hive? Yes, it is possible to be that wonderful.

That list is shorter than I remember it being… I think I’ve lumped in there the random assortment of books I’ve read about things like gardening, sheep, knitting, spinning, cooking and general do-it-yourselfness. Anyway, I’ve started packing and while I’ve been doing that silly nonsense (who needs to pack if you’re going to drive across the country? You could just shove is all in a car because, really, a car is like a giant box and boxes are what you pack things in and if I were to just pile things into the car they would naturally protect each other. Clothes would be like eco-friendly packing peanuts and everything would probably fit) I’ve been listening to the 61 again. What music has been on repeat, you might be asking? I was just getting to that, so you should really just be patient for a second, ok? Ok, good.